Pro-life pregnancy center opens near abortion clinics in Ireland

The American pro-life pregnancy help group Stanton Healthcare is opening a facility in Belfast, Ireland, on the same street as a Marie Stopes abortion clinic and near an International Family Planning Association abortion clinic.

Stanton, which is based in Boise, Idaho, set up its first overseas location with the help of Precious Life, a Northern Ireland pro-life group. Its mission is to stand in “direct opposition” to Marie Stopes’s pro-abortion work and to provide a pro-life location nearby for women visiting them.

According to founder Brandi Swindell, Stanton’s mission is “to make sure that women know that there’s more than one option, there’s life-affirming alternatives, there’s compassionate solutions to unexpected pregnancies, and that’s what women deserve.”

The Belfast location will offer medical care, post-abortion counseling, and free ultrasounds, which Swindell claims persuade 92% of Stanton’s visitors who see them to choose life. Live Action News has previously found that a variety of studies and outcomes reported by pregnancy centers show that ultrasounds significantly reduce women’s likelihood to abort.

Irish pro-lifers note that Marie Stopes and pro-abortion forces are attempting to expand legal abortion in Northern Ireland, where the procedure is currently permitted only to save a mother’s life, through activism such as an abortion pill bus tour Live Action reported on yesterday.

That, Swindell says, is why “we need to be here now. We also want to be ready.”